Beaujolais Noveau

So, it's that happy day when the first of the new harvest wines are released. I'm sipping a $23 Georges DuBoeuf and it's quite average. But, it's my reward for a week with no hubby around and small children who keep waking up in the night. Perhaps I'll slip the little one some wine with his dinner. (Just kidding, in case anyone feels like reporting me to the Japanese version of DHS.)

My 5 yo is making things out of straws, milk packs, and tape. He just showed me his latest creations: a butterfly, a nebulizer mask, and a nasal aspirator. Can you tell we've spent a lot of time at the local E, N, T doctor's office for an ear infection caused by nasal congestion? I could write a whole blog on how much I hate the doctor's offices here, but I don't want to kill my Nouveau buzz.

My 2 yo is making various scribbles with his crayons on paper (and on the table). So far, no creations or descriptions to note. If he had a larger vocabulary, I'm sure he'd say that one of them is a picture of mommy ripping her hair out at 6:30 in the morning after being up for 2 hours with the insomniac toddler.

I would take pictures and post them, but I can't find the charger for my small digital camera. You know, the one I never use, because my husband is the family photographer with his professional camera and lenses. Oh well.

I'll end this here so I can actually cook the pork cutlets I planned for dinner. Otherwise, my kids will be getting chicken nuggets. Yes, they have them in Japan and yes, they are in the freezer for when all else fails. Hey, I even have Japanese tater tots if I really want to be slack. I wonder if they pair well with a fruity young red wine...

On two year-olds and deja vu

Tak took his nap early today and woke up around 2 p.m. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt that had been his brother's and woke up with that scrunchy baby stretch that is a rarity these days. Do you remember that stretch? You hold them under their arms and they scrunch their face and yawn while stretching out to remove the remainders of the fetal position. But they always forget their legs, still curled tightly under themselves.

I'm holding this 30 lb toddler and only half of him is awake and he's looking at me with a dazed expression. He lets me cuddle with him on the couch and sniff the back of his neck. It's a rare thing these days. Usually he's swatting my face like a demented leopard cub or climbing over my shoulders and ripping out my hair in the process. He's so boy-like, that I forget he was a new babe only two years ago.

And the sweatshirt. Big brother loved that sweatshirt, rarely took it off. It's weird seeing him in Kai's clothes knowing that they fit completely differently. Tak is a sumo wrestler, not fat, but strong and solid. Kai is a long distance runner, lithe and lean. Every parenting book says not to compare your kids, but it is so hard not to do that, especially when you have two of the same gender. Comparisons burst out without even trying. Every article of clothing has a memory attached to it and those memories refuse to be suppressed.

And life is so bittersweet these days. I want for my boys to have the childhood I had, but at the same time, I'm so happy that they have this opportunity to be in Japan and be with their grandparents. I'm still working on staying in this moment, but there are too many days when I get sucked into the past.

Random thoughts on summer in Japan

How do you know you are living in Japan? Well, besides the heat and humidity, it's usually the things that you scratch your head over that makes you think, "Damn, I'm living in a foreign country." Here's a list of random thoughts:

1. Oldest son's preschool/daycare sent him home with a big bag of fireworks and the admonition that fireworks should only be done with an adult present. Gee, you think 1000 degree sparklers are a good idea for a 5 year old? What's next, send him home with a machete and instructions that it should only be used on weeds?

2. I know it's hot, but does everyone need to wear long sleeves and ugly hats? Of course, this only applies to adults. My oldest is the color of leather since his preschool has a wading pool and doesn't believe in sunscreen.

3. Why are vegetables so cheap and why is fruit so g-damn expensive? I've taken to shopping the discount bin for lightly bruised fruit. I've scored apples, peaches, nectarines, grapes, cherries, and kiwi with this method. Thank god for the Japanese obsession with perfect, unblemished fruit. I'll take the cheap, ugly ones any day.

4. Speaking of fruit, there is only one thing worse than a fruit fly infestation. That would be a fruit fly MAGGOT infestation. Truly disgusting. I'm now emptying the raw trash more often.

5. Ah yes, trash. I'm so sick and f-king tired of sorting my trash by the ten thousand inscrutable rules. Example, plastic goes in a yellow trash bag, unless it's blue bag OTHER PLASTIC. And what is other plastic? Well..... Toothbrushes, tupperware, plastic models. Clear as mud, eh? Oh, but don't put PET plastic bottles (coke bottles, etc.) in either of those, they go in a separate green bag. Same green bag is used for glass bottles, but you can't mix them. But you can mix glass and steel cans. Now you know why my husband puts plastic things in the raw garbage (clear bag) and says, "I lived in America, screw this."

6. Cicada. Most annoying noisy bug on earth. Why do Japanese children like to catch them? Oh wait, it's to make them screech even more. Now there's a hobby guaranteed to set a parent on edge. (See picture of oldest son with cicada on soccer ball above. Cicada died a ball-related death only minutes later...)

Okay, I should make a list of ten, but BeanPasteHead Man is over and my boys will start beating themselves up any moment now.

Hotter than the hinges of Hades...

I really don't enjoy the summers in Japan. It's currently 89 outside and the humidity is something like 85%. There is a nice smog-filled breeze blowing from the inland sea, but it still doesn't solve things like my mildewing leather shoes in our shoe cabinet. (Yes, I know there are dehumidifier packs, I'm just too lazy to buy them.)

Combine the heat and humidity with a cranky 21 month old who has a sprained ankle, and you'll realize why Spike Lee made a movie about a heat wave sending people to the edges of insanity. Tak not only can't walk, but he also had a fever and herpangina earlier this week, so it's been a really restful week in our house.

Did I mention that Monday was a holiday here, but my husband's company makes everyone work the following Saturday after a Monday holiday? Bastards. Oh well, at least he comes home around 6:00 p.m. when he works Saturdays. Yippee.

In an effort not to be 100% negative, I will end my post with one positive about Japan. Japanese tomatoes are fabulous and really inexpensive. The cucumbers are pretty good too.

Screw-top wine

I'm drinking a glass of Chilean screw-top wine purchased from Max Value supermarket. It's almost 7:00 p.m., my mother-in-law is making dinner, the kids are watching Anpanman and the hubby is still trapped at work for at least another hour.

What does this have to do with anything? Nothing really, but I'm listening to the bread truck outside our building with its catchy jingle of "come buy delicious bread from the yellow truck" and I'm not rushing outside. Although part of me is curious and I just want to buy a loaf for the hell of it. Instead, I savor my slightly astringent 680 yen bottle of wine and try to remember that screw-top is not synonymous with bad wine. It's apparently all the vogue these days. Except that in Japan, it serves a more practical purpose since most people don't own a corkscrew.

I'm not really a wine snob, but it's rather sad that I drink my wine alone these days. My in-laws won't drink any wine unless it's sickly sweet. My husband doesn't drink at all since he's usually too tired to drink. And none of my friends can come over for a glass of wine since they can't drive afterward. Besides that, none of my Japanese friends are really the wine drinking kind. They are more of the grain alcohol spritzer type.

I drank the three bottles of decent wine that I bought at Costco last month, so now I'm stuck with screw-tops. Yeah, in this case, screw-top means mediocre wine.

Pinworms

My 4 year-old's preschool sent everyone home with a pinworm collection kit. Oh joy. I realize that preschoolers are not the cleanliest of creatures, but does the school really have to make all the parents check their child's intestinal tract for microscopic parasites?

I don't really mind the fact that they check my child's weight and height once a month. I actually welcome the visit from the dentist, since I'm hoping it will convince some of the snaggly-toothed kids to brush their teeth. But I rather resent having to collect samples of fecal matter. Over two days, no less. Ugh.

I think this is where I hand the kit to my husband and tell him that I can't read the instructions. I know, it's really not fair to play the "dumb gaijin"card, but if I screw it up, I will have to do it all over again. Better to let the native speaker do it right the first time.

Life at a different angle.

One of the few incontrovertible facts of life is that the sun sets in the west. Having lived in Seattle, with its convenient grid of N-S-E-W streets, I was used to the sun rising in my bedroom and setting in my family room.

That is not the case here in St. Honore Nibankan condominiums. The condo faces the sea, but dammit, the sun seems to set in the southwest. By the end of the day, it's beyond my in-laws balcony and I'm feeling the laundry to see if it actually dried in the pre-rainy season sunshine.

It bothers me, the sun's lack of respect for my sense of order. Instead of a diagonal sliver of sun coming across my bedroom, I want the full-on retina burn that only direct sunlight can give. (Oh, and our bedroom is a BED Room now. We have a bed! Woo hoo!) Also, I resent the perpetually hazy, indirect sunlight that never makes it into my family room. Perhaps I will change my mind during the long, hot days of Japanese summer.

I'm not sure why Japan is the land of the rising sun and why the flag reflects that. Maybe no one could figure out where it sets in the this curvaceous mountainous country, so that's why it's always rising...

Nothing in particular...

I don't really have anything to write about. It's late, I'm tired. There's a sink full of dirty dishes and writing is more avoidance than anything else. I've already checked the yahoo group I belong to for foreign women married to Japanese men. Nothing new, just a discussion of favorite TV shows and which hospitals allow pain relief while giving birth. (Note to self: do not give birth in Japan. No wonder the birthrate is so low. Pain makes you bond with your baby? Puh-leeze!)

I could clean off my desk since it is piled high with crayons, cellphone bills, teaching materials, glue sticks and preschool info (all in Japanese, argh, where is my kanji dictionary? what the hell does that character mean?) We are having house guests next week and my house looks like the rubbish monster urped all over it. (See the previous post about my built-in babysitter being gone all this week. No babysitter=Hellhole of a condo)

So tomorrow I'm planning more avoidance. I'm going to a flea market and an arts and crafts fair in the same morning. Because nothing cleans your house like bringing in a load of more crap.

All right, I'm going to wash dishes and go to bed.

The importance of having an 'out'

I realized as I was washing dishes just now, how important it is to always have an "out." Kind of like the first year of my marriage. I think K and I joked about divorce pretty much every week or so. It wasn't that we were unhappy, it was just that we needed to know we could still return to our single lives even if that wasn't really the case.

The last 9 months have been weird. We sold off our possessions, rented out our house, committed to a new life and, for my husband, a new job. When things have been at their worst, we have joked that we can kick out our tenants and K could get a new job back in the U.S. The truth is, we have so deeply entrenched ourselves here, that it seems highly unlikely that we'd do that now. How deeply, you ask? Gee, we now have two Japanese mortgages, one of which is for my in-laws who live next door. My kids are so bonded with their grandparents that my mother-in-law doesn't want to go away next week because she'd miss her youngest grandson too much. Mind you, she's only going away for 5 days to Fukuoka which is less than 3 hours away. I have two aunts-in-law who have no grandkids of their own and view my kids as their own grandkids. For mother's day, I bought 3 presents, and my mother isn't even alive.

So, for my mental health, I believe that I could pick up and move on at any moment. It's the escape valve of my ego-driven, angst-ridden pressure cooker of a mind. And while I'm plotting all of my life scenarios in my pink rubber gloves, I realize that all I really want these days is a dishwasher. And maybe now I should go get the littlest one from Grandma's condo, since I let him fall asleep there tonight.

The in-laws next door...

My in-laws moved into the condo next door to us this past weekend. Actually, they only moved their futons, the dialysis machine and a couple of pots and pans. The rest is waiting until 4/15 when Sakai movers (the ones with the panda logo, as opposed to the kangaroo, black cat, or pelican logo) will move them.

At 7:45 this morning, a cheery hello rang out in the hallway as MIL unlocked the door and carried a pot of coffee in. (Ah yes, she also brought a kettle and a drip filter to the new place.) This was not entirely unexpected. Fortunately, my in-laws and I have a close relationship, which is about to be even closer. It was lovely having a built-in babysitter as I drove the big one to preschool and left the little one with Grandma.

Time to wake up the little one from his really late nap and go pick up the big one from school. Unfortunately, neither grandparent is around at the moment or I would leave him sleeping.

Taxes

Today I decided to do the double whammy of Japanese and U.S. taxes. Actually, Japanese taxes are done by your employer, so all I had to do was file some forms for Kazuya so that we can get our mortgage interest deduction next year. All in all, it was fairly painless, but it did require a trip to the city hall for a family register and a trip to the tax office to hand off the paperwork.

I wish I could say that our U.S. taxes will be so easy. I installed TurboTax today and was shocked to find out that I can't e-file our taxes if our address is overseas. Bummer. I started reading the foreign earned income credit and my first response was, "What a colossal pain in the ass." But, at least, I don't have to file out the forms in Kanji...

I decided to close TurboTax and blog instead. After all, I get an automatic two-month extension for living overseas, so why should I rush? I think I'll go clean my kitchen and eat my sandwich instead. De-nial, it's not just a river in Africa.

8:35 p.m.

The husband called to let me know that he would be very late tonight as opposed to "normal" late. I appreciated the call and I hurried the kids home from Grandma and Grandpa's just in time to watch the last two episodes of Anpanman (Bean Paste Bun Man). I fed them a delicious meal of leftover rice, nori, apple, kiwi, Grandma's fried chicken. I watched the four year-old melt down from sheer exhaustion. I scrubbed the bath tub and hit the auto-fill button. I listened to the cheery chime telling me the bath tub was filled and took stock of my children.

Oldest one is passed out in his preschool uniform on the couch. Youngest one is lining up every train, truck, automobile, etc. on the hot carpet. I asked him if he wanted to take a bath. He said no. I didn't argue, I just put the cover on the tub and I figure I'll ask again in another 10 minutes. I looked at the clock, 8:35. The little one took a late nap and will probably resist sleep for at least another hour. The big one is still passed out in spite of the fact that Tak keeps hitting the sound buttons on the trains and fire truck.

Cell phone rings at 8:45. Husband on the way home, only late, not very late. Tak now wants to take a bath. And I've successfully added to my blog. Not bad for a Tuesday evening in our happy home.

Smog

After my whirlwind tour of all shopping spots in Seattle, I'm back home in Hikari. I'm proud to say that my two bags were just under the 50 lb per piece limit. This is an accomplishment since I bought books, clothes, honey, candy, Emer-gen-c, decaf tea, etc.

Why honey? Because, in Japan, most honey comes from China, and therefore must be avoided. Yes, I have adopted the Japanese dislike for all Chinese food items. Maybe I do this because of the recent potsticker/pesticide scandal that sickened over 100 people. Maybe I do this because I look out my window and can't see the islands one mile away because of the smog from China. I could blame the local factories, but even they can't be responsible for a haze that thick.

So, I lugged back two bottles of 100% American honey. Along with half-price Valentine's candy to rot the teeth of my son's preschool classmates. Long live American capitalism.

Hi Jack...

Okay, I'm a slacker writer. Now that I've confessed, this particular blog is for Jack. Blogging is not writing practice. It does not go deep or go quick. It is too easy to delete and edit and patch over the ugly imperfections of my thoughts and actions. It's too easy to spend five minutes fretting over a word and in the end still hating the word you chose.

So without backing up or fixing my typing mistakes here is five minutes of going deep while typing: I'm not sure I like my lifew right now. I feel like some sort of exotic lollipop that stays in a candy shop waiting for someone to buy her. I'm sure there is something freudian in that. The image of meing licked and all that. I 'm just so frustrated and i can't even begin to put into sords all of my frustrations. My husband's work hours, my gaijinity my becoming the local ambassador for all things foreihn in this city. The fact that I like the attention of being different but I hate all the kids at my sons preschool who yell at me to speak english to them like some kind of trained monkey. I 'm also worried that Tak is becoming more attached to grandma than me. On tht eother hand, i'm worried that this doesn't bother me all that much which mieans that I'm a bad mother? I really do want someone to tell me what i'm supposed to be when I grow up and it's already 2008. Whree the hell did 2000- 2007 go? I'm turning 40 this month and i have nothing to show for it. Times' up.

Thanks Jack for all the encouragement. It means a lot.

I had a house in Seattle...

In my best Karen Von Blixen, or at least Meryl Streep's version of her, I find myself saying, "I had a house in Seattle." It comes to me at the weirdest times, this vague mourning of my former life and lifestyle. I can be brushing my teeth and I'll look up at the circular fluorescent light and think, "wow, that is so, NOT, a skylight." Of course, since we live on the fifth floor of a ten floor condominium, it would be quite disconcerting if I suddenly could see the full moon through a bathroom skylight.

I also just thought I heard our hot water heating system clicking on. We had radiant wall heat in our house in Seattle and one wall would make a clicking sound as the hot water started pumping through it. It startled me to hear the same sound and at the same time I was nostalgic for central heating since I sleep in a room that is 52 degrees these nights.

Time for me to go brush my teeth and shiver under the covers and dream of American style comforts.

Sad

Do you ever have one of those painful, poignant, lost in the moment kind of days? Tak is sleeping on my lap as I type this and even though I only want two kids, I'm so sad that his baby days are over. He's a hefty 11 kgs and his hair is starting to get fuller. He's developed a sense of humor and imitates other people, especially when they fart. He's also developed a sense of rage and has been known to whack people in the face when things aren't going his way.

Does everyone have this sense of regret when it comes to their last child? With Kai, I couldn't wait to send him to preschool and for him to be more independent. Even now, I get impatient with him when he says he can't do something that I know he can. He has the power to push my buttons and get me so angry. With Tak, I'm more patient. He's still my baby and I have a hard time getting angry with him when he pulls stunts that I know are age appropriate.

Everything they say about birth order is probably true. Poor Kai bears the brunt of my parenting mistakes. Whereas Tak gets way more freedom than Kai ever did at that age. And lately, I've been a pretty awful parent. I've been caught up in my own frustration over our new lifestyle that I've forgotten how tough it is to be four. I don't want to give Kai any sympathy over his petty frustrations when I have a plate full of bigger ones. Sigh.......

And so I'm sad. Not Heath Ledger kind of sad, but disappointed and deflated sad. And now I need to go pick my first born up from preschool. Maybe this is why some days my mom made us pudding, to assuage the mama guilt. Can't say I blame her. I really only remember the wonderful things she did for us, the pudding must've worked.

Work Avoidance

Tak is napping in our frigid back bedroom and I'm avoiding housework. All told, an excellent reason to blog. I could be watching the Jim Lehrer news hour on BS1, but instead I've been reading all the posts on my "married to a #@$*! Japanese" group. Misery loves company, and women married to Japanese men seem to be especially miserable. That's not really fair, but it seems that the latent lump of Japanese masculinity surfaces when the husband is living in his own country. Which is a nice way of saying I have a sink full of dishes, since my husband no longer even pretends that we share housekeeping duties. After all, he works 12 hour days and I'm a pampered housewife.

I'm chipping away at the boxes of stuff we moved from Seattle. We now have cookbooks, children's books and videos, and office supplies. Now if I could just get art up on my walls. Speaking of walls, I've hit one with the particular post, so I'm going to go take my chapped hands and wash some dishes.

Mind like pudding...

Started the new year off thinking that I will embrace my spirituality and cultivate a mind like water. You know, the whole "if a lake is still, you can see everything in it and reflected upon it."
Instead, I've embraced the "mind like pudding." I see nothing and my thoughts are a mindless confectionery goop.

I've taken to wallowing in self-pity from time to time. Okay, I admit it, quite frequently these days. We have the condo, but I still have no husband in the evenings and I still have way too many boxes to unpack and no place to put things when I unpack them. I want furniture. Of course, I got a free couch from my aunt-in-law, and the best thing I can say about it is that it was free. If I were truly zen, I would stop here and not slander the couch and the taste of the person who picked it out, but I can't resist a good snark. It is an army green pleather sectional couch from the late 80's. It also smells like incense and mildew. I must remind myself, "gift horse, gift horse..."

My mother-in-law is also trying to help with the decorating. If she had her way, everything would be flowers and puppies. I've taken to stereotyping my whole country and telling her that Americans don't like cute things. So far I've limited the design damage to a calendar with puppies and kittens, a bath mat shaped like a small dog and a flowered kitchen mat. I'm hoping that one of my sons will destroy one or all of these things so that I can remove them from my home.